The present invention relates to a printable material, such as an ink jet printable material. In certain embodiments, the present invention relates to a heat transfer material.
The popularity in recent years of personal computers in homes and businesses has stimulated the development of several types of printers. The earlier, relatively low cost printers were impact or dot-matrix printers which utilized a ribbon and a plurality of pins to place a desired image on a substrate which typically was paper. While the better dot-matrix printers are capable of near letter-quality printing, they typically are both slow and noisy. Laser printers are quiet, produce high-quality images, and can print an excess of four pages per minute. Such printers, however, tend to be too expensive for common use in homes and even in some smaller businesses; this is especially true for color laser printers. Ink jet printers fill the gap between dot-matrix printers and laser printers, both with respect to cost and image quality.
The advent of improved, relatively low cost color printers has aided the development of a significant industry which involves the application of customer-selected designs, messages, illustrations, and the like (referred to collectively hereinafter as "customer-selected graphics") on articles of clothing, such as T-shirts, sweat shirts, and the like. These customer-selected graphics typically are commercially available products tailored for that specific end-use and are printed on a release or transfer paper. They are applied to the article of clothing by means of heat and pressure, after which the release or transfer paper is removed.
Some effort has been directed to allowing customers the opportunity to prepare their own graphics for application to an article of clothing. The preparation of such graphics may involve the use of colored crayons made from a heat-transferable material. Such crayons have been made available in kit form, which also includes an unspecified heat transfer sheet having an outlined pattern thereon. In a variation of the kit, the transferable pattern is created from a manifold of a heat transfer sheet and a reverse or lift-type copy sheet having a pressure transferable coating of heat transferable material thereon. By generating the pattern or artwork on the obverse face of the transfer sheet with the pressure of a drafting instrument, a heat transferable mirror image pattern is created on the rear surface of the transfer sheet by pressure transfer from the copy sheet. The heat transferable mirror image then can be applied to a T-shirt or other article by heat transfer.
The creation of personalized, creative designs or images on a fabric such as a T-shirt or the like through the use of a personal computer system has been described. The method involves electronically generating an image, electronically transferring the image to a printer, printing the image with the aid of the printer on an obverse surface of a transfer sheet which has a final or top coating consisting essentially of Singapore Dammar Resin, positioning the obverse face of the transfer sheet against the fabric, and applying energy to the rear of the transfer sheet to transfer the image to the fabric. The transfer sheet can be any commercially available transfer sheet, the heat-transferable coating of which has been coated with an overcoating of Singapore Dammar Resin. The use of abrasive particles in the Singapore Dammar Resin coating also has been described. The abrasive particles serve to enhance the receptivity of the transfer sheet to various inks and wax-based crayons.
Additionally, improved heat transfer papers having an enhanced receptivity for images made by wax-based crayons, thermal printer ribbons, and impact ribbon or dot-matrix printers have been disclosed. For example, a cellulosic base sheet has an image-receptive coating containing from about 15 to about 80 percent of a film-forming binder and from about 85 to about 20 percent by weight of a powdered polymer consisting of particles having diameters from about 2 to about 50 micrometers. The binder typically is a latex. Alternatively, a cellulosic base sheet has an image-receptive coating which typically is formed by melt extrusion or by laminating a film to the base sheet. The surface of the coating or film then is roughened by, for example, passing the coated base sheet through an embossing roll.
Some effort also has been directed at generally improving the transfer of an image-bearing laminate to a substrate. For example, an improved release has been described, in which upon transfer the release splits from a carrier and forms a protective coating over the transferred image. The release is applied as a solution and contains a montan wax, a rosin ester or hydrocarbon resin, a solvent, and an ethylene-vinyl acetate copolymer having a low vinyl acetate content.
Additional effort has been directed to improving the adhesion of the transferred laminate to porous, semi-porous, or non-porous materials, and the development of a conformable transfer layer which enables the melt transfer web to be used to transfer images to uneven surfaces.
It is well known by those having ordinary skill in the art that current ink jet inks are aqueous-based systems. That is, the dyes employed in such inks are soluble in water. Thus, substrates printed with ink jet inks have a pronounced proclivity to run or even lose an image in the presence of moisture or water. Moreover, customer-selected graphics produced by desk-top publishing software and printed by ink jet printers result in graphics which in general are not transferred satisfactorily by known heat transfer papers. This is particularly true when transfer is attempted with a hand-held iron. Consequently, there is an opportunity for an improved heat transfer paper which has been developed specifically for graphics printed with an ink jet printer, i.e., an ink-jet printable heat transfer paper. There also is an opportunity for an improved heat transfer paper which has improved durability, especially in the presence of water, and which results in a softer, more pliable transferred image. More generally, there is an opportunity for an improved material which has been developed specifically for graphics printed with an ink jet printer, wherein the printed graphics will have improved durability, especially in the presence of water.